The Attention Merchants

Wherever you turn these days, commercials, sponsored social media, and other advertising efforts await your attention. The influential thinker Tim Wu says we have the “attention merchants” to thank for that. In a new book, Wu argues that the concerted efforts of advertisers to attract our attention at every opportunity has made us more distracted and less focused than ever before. Wu joins us to explore the rise of the attention merchants and the human costs of their efforts. [Rebroadcast]

Tim Wu is an author, policy advocate, and the Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. His writing has appeared in Slate,The New Yorker,Time, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Forbes. His new book is called The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads [Amazon|Indiebound].

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Wherever you turn these days, commercials, sponsored social media, and other advertising efforts await your attention. The influential thinker Tim Wu says we have the “attention merchants” to thank for that. In a new book, Wu argues that the concerted efforts of advertisers to attract our attention at every opportunity has made us more distracted and less focused than ever before. Wu joins us Monday to explore the rise of the attention merchants and the human costs of their efforts.